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Wooden Truck With Self Tipping and Motor Noise

About: Woodsman and field tutor on a week day. Life long inventor, designer, engineer for the rest of the time. From items that make life easier to items with no reason to be....other than the idea popped into my h...
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Many years ago I volunteered in the woodworking classroom of a local school. I was asked to come up with an exam piece for a year group to make. My remit was that the build should be wheeled and make a noise. I also had to make up kits of parts with all the wood in blank form, a pair of dowel axles a set of wheels and a small piece of plastic to make the motor noise.

This instructable shows what I designed, well more or less, the one I have built here is made to look a bit like an AEC Matador the cabs on the ones for the school were just a square block.

Step 1: The Wheels

I decided to make my own wheels out of 12mm MDF, roughed out on the band saw then turned up in the lathe.

To give the back wheels some grip I put 2 grooves in them to accept O-rings, I then couterbored them part way through to the size of the axles, in my case 9.5mm.

I will do more on the wheels later in the build.

Step 2: Chassis and Tipping Gear

The parts described here are all made from 12mm ply

The tipping gear assembly is a nice fit in the slot at the back of the chassis, it too has a slot cut in it for the motor/tipping spraggs (described next step).

Once the chassis and pivot blocks were screwed together the two assemblies were clamped together and the axle hole was drilled centred on the join lines of the parts.

Step 3: Rear Axle Assembly

The spraggs are squares of thin ply that are the same size as the thickness of the tipping gear assembly, they are drilled through the centre and stuck onto the centre of the axle at 45 degrees to each other.

Step 4: Motor Noise

This is a small piece of stiff plastic held in place with a woodscrew positioned as shown in the drawing above.

Step 5: First Test

With the wheels on and the beginings of a cab in place I did a trial run of the click and tip gear, the noise is a bit quiet but it is there and will be better when I put the O-ring tyres on to give it more grip.

Step 6: The Cab

A lump of wood...that is it really, choose your favorite truck and fettle the wood to make it look right, then start adding some little details like radiator cowl and window frames.......

I will come back to this too.

Step 7: Rear Bed

A 6mm piece of ply for the base, built up on 3 sides with 3mm ply, I added a bit of detail with narrow strips of ply around the edges. A swinging tailgate was made up and simple pin hinges added to hang it from.

The raw edge along the top was tidied up with veneer.

Step 8: Wheels Revisited

As the turned wheels looked a bit plain I decided to give them a little bit of shape. I cut some 3mm MDF discs on the band saw, turned them to size then bored out the centres.

Once they were all cleaned and smoothed out came the black sharpie! The embelishers were blacked on the outside only, the wheels were lined around the outer edge and the back was blacked in completely.

Once the ink was dry I stuck the pieces together with pva adhesive.

Step 9: Fuel Tanks

A couple of off-cuts of broom handle got re-purposed as fuel tanks

Step 10: Starting the Finishing :)

As this truck is made from all sorts of scrap pieces of timber, some of which were painted and needed to be stripped, it was a bit multicoloured so I gave the chassis a coat of mahogany stain to even it out a bit.

I also decided that I did not like the front bumper as the full size truck doesn't have such a thing.... so I cut it off and added a tow hitch spring :).

I also veneered the fuel tanks, exposed chassis members and radiator cowl.

Step 11: Cab Revisited

The next operation was to veneer the cab, this involves a lot of stages over a number of days, I started off by sketching out the window frames to check proportions.

The sides were skinned

Side windows framed

Front windows framed

roof covered

Veneer grill and fit

Varnish!

Step 12: The Finished Item

I may yet put a couple of extra coats of varnish but that is it about done :)

Here is a last video of it in action.... the only difference from the previous movie is that the cab is shinier!